Wednesday, October 18, 2006

A Nerd in the Door

In every world except Garfield's, automatic doors have sensors to protect people from being smashed in their mighty jaws. In Jon's double-barreled dumb-move, he not only managed to injure himself in an impossible way, but wants to twist the focus into a joke about our horrible relationship with technology. It's not that joke. It's a story about Jon's good intentions being squashed under the weight of his zealousness. It's about unnecessary, overwhelming desire to please others, and being thwarted by your own stupidity and inabilities. Jon feels on some sublimated level that his chivalrous intentions are a positive trait, and refuses to acknowledge that the automatic doors of the Garfield world are telling him otherwise.

Garfield, meanwhile, has concocted a coping strategy that leaves his arm unwrenched and ego unbruised: he doesn't try to impress anyone, and pretends he doesn't care about them.

I kind of feel like there should be a service, similar to the one which removed all of Garfield's thoughts, or the one that presented three random panels, for removing the third panel of Garfield comics. It would recontextualize the strip wholly. Actually, maybe that should happen for every three-panel gag strip.

I think Dan Hulton is half-right, but the problem is, most of the two-panel jokes wouldn't be funny at all if told in two panels. The silences are part of the joke, is this episode, self-mockingly points out.

Since both Stangl's other blog and his webcomic are being updated, I think it is safe to say this site is finally dead. However, I would like to thank him for reviving my interest in Garfield. It's been... enlightening.

Sometimes Jon is an American equivalent of Mr Bean, plus cat. This 'A Nerd in the Door' strip show the kind of very improbable injury Bean would bring on himself, and the same same kind of reaction -blaming the door. Luckily for Garfield, Bean lives on the other side of the Atlantic. :)

I must join the cacophony of voices calling for a return of this blog. Come back! I only discovered this tonight (6/5/07) through StumbleUpon. It is the most impressive artistic analysis I have ever read online.

NPR just told me that today, June 19, is Garfield's birthday. And I remembered recently having started reading Garfield again for the first time in years... and even visiting his website a few times! Then I wondered why on earth I would have done such a thing. Then I remembered, and re-Googled this blog. And now I'm kinda sad that I don't have months of deconstructed Garfield to catch up on. I guess Monday's not so permanent after all... :/